Mrs. Pilkins did not reply. All of the wind had fled her sails and she sat slumped and withered upon the couch, silent tears streaming down her cheeks, each bookend daughter doing everything with attentive strokes and pats to assuage her misery, their eyes bedewed as well.
It was Sir Dabber who chose next to speak: “Dr. Towlinson, has the hospital board been apprised of the young man’s condition?”
“They’ll be informed at our next scheduled meeting on Monday evening.”
“And what is the present status of the other Returnees?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“How similar are their respective conditions to that of Mr. Skewton’s?”
“Quite a few are nearly as bad. We’ve tried large doses of every remedy that can be compounded: bromide of potassium, belladonna, chloride of aluminum, ferrous sulfate, quinine, tartar of arsenic, stramonium tobacco. It is all for naught, my good man. The tragedy of it haunts my dreams and disturbs my waking hours. When I at life’s end prepare to depart this world, my inability to heal these men and women will constitute my greatest professional regret and disappointment.”
“But you say that Mr. Skewton’s condition is the worst? There is no one amongst the other Returnees whom you could say displays more acute symptoms than does Mrs. Pilkins’ unfortunate brother?”
“There was Mr. Gamfield, but, alas — do not speak of this outside these walls, for his family has yet to be told — he died this morning. In the midst of a fit. He was being conveyed to the bathing room and threw himself against a wall and cracked open—” The doctor lowered his voice now in deference to the tender ears of the females in the room. “Cracked open his skull. There was significant loss of brain matter. The skull must have been weakened in its constituency from the gentleman’s having struck his head repeatedly against the wall of his own cell as the most grievous idiots do.”
Mrs. Pilkins, having heard every word, gasped and then was seised by a paroxysm of tears that did not abate even as she was being led by her daughters out of the office and down the corridor and away. I reached for her hand to give comfort as she passed but could not secure it. Nor did she see my look of commiseration, nor the look of sadness upon the face of my companion Sir Dabber.
“And there it is,” said Dr. Towlinson, as the sound of the footsteps of Mrs. Pilkins and her attending daughters died quickly away. Towlinson clasped his hands together as if in relief over their departure.
“And the inquest — has it been scheduled?” asked Dabber.
“It will be done as soon as possible. We must put all of this behind us. Now if there is nothing else to be discussed, I am very busy and must be on my rounds. It is my primary goal to see each visitation Wednesday proceed as smoothly as possible for my visitors as well as for my patients and those who tend to them. It is all a very carefully-orchestrated business and I am the conductor who holds the wand.”
The doctor, who, apparently, thought himself a symphony conductor, rose from his chair and offered his hand. The three of us shook in silence, and in like silence were we escorted from the chambers and out into the passage. Noting our reticence, Towlinson, with one hand gripping the door handle, released a long sigh through his nostrils. “I take it that my brief discourse on the unfortunate state of things wasn’t what you came to hear.”
“Indeed not,” said Sir Dabber, dispiritedly. I merely shook my head in wordless concurrence. Dabber had one thing more to say, which he delivered in a subdued voice: “Things were not so difficult when I served on the board. The Returnees were more tractable then, and their situations less severe.”
“The disease has progressed. To a man. One might chart the course of one and apply it to all the others. Here is the thing that most disturbs me and I will tell it you in all honesty: Mr. Gamfield was not the exception. He was actually, in my studied opinion, the vanguard.”
Dabber returned: “Meaning that every man and woman who was once in the Outland and has returned to Dingley Dell faces the eventuality of violent death within this place?”
Towlinson nodded with gravity. “And let us be thankful that we are able to contend with them within these walls rather than without so that others will not be harmed or leastways collaterally inconvenienced. It is my educated conjecture that the trajectory of each man and woman so afflicted leads to the very same end. Some will take longer to succumb than others, but the course is the same. Now, gentlemen, I really must be about my rounds.” Towlinson turned and closed the door behind him. He drew a key from his waistcoat pocket and locked the door, then gave the handle a pull to test the fastness of the lock. Without giving so much as a parting glance in our direction, he strode quckly down the corridor and was gone. Dabber and I were left standing in stunned silence.
“I don’t believe him,” I finally took breath to say.
‘Nor I,” said Sir Dabber. “Something is direly amiss. I cannot put my finger on it. Yet I am deeply disturbed by it.”
I nodded.
“But alas, there is nothing to be done about it to-day. On Monday I shall go to this month’s board meeting. I have leave to attend as emeritus member of that body. You will come with me.”
I shook my head, less in disagreement than quandary. “That is a closed meeting, Sir Dabber. Surely, I would not be given leave to attend.”
“I will plead for your presence under a petition of special circumstances. I want everything that is said in that room put down on paper, and your shorthand will serve us invaluably. Formerly the board has not kept minutes of its proceedings, but from now on we must have an indisputable record of its business. Come. Let us see my boy before the day has fled.”
“May I ask you one question before we proceed?”
“Of course.”
“During your full tenure upon the hospital board, what was the reason given for why victims of the Terror Tremens, all of them Returnees from the Outland, were denied visitation by their family and friends?”
“The contagious nature of the affliction, of course.”
“There was never another reason put forward — even one that you may have accidentally overheard?”
Dabber shook his head. After a thoughtful pause, he said, “Although I have always found the policy to be rather Draconian in some of its aspects. Consider, for example, the fact that it wasn’t only face-to-face contact between patient and non-patient that was disallowed. There was a proscription placed upon all written correspondence as well.”
“And do you not recall thinking this queer, even unfair at the time?”
“Somewhat. But I was never one to second-guess decisions made by the board. Generally speaking, I simply deferred to the better judgement of Towlinson and Fibbetson on such matters. Yet now that I stop to consider it fully, I do find it most disturbingly queer, and, yes, patently unfair, and I intend to ask for a more detailed justification at Monday’s meeting.”
As we headed down the long gallery that led to the cellar stairs, the imbeciles having been temporarily relegated to the cellar chambers whilst their rooms above were being refurbished, I thought of the magical calculating machine and how it added and subtracted and divided and multiplied numbers, and told one exactly what one wished to know of an arithmetical nature. It did not, most obviously could not, answer those questions that most often pressed upon the minds of Dinglians: Why, in truth, did this place called Dingley Dell come to be? For what purpose? And to what end? And where were we all to be when every question had finally received its answer? More immediately, what other wonders and horrors remained hidden within the valley, privy only to the Towlinsons and the Pupkers amongst us?